The latest, the hard way

Well, I hate to post stuff so back to back like this, but blogger had to be reminded at 5:45 pm that 7:33 am had already come and gone.  So actually, this is on time and my lovely perusal of Obama’s latest attempt to be the Grinch that stole Religion is late.

In any event, Lokomotiv notched another win, this time against an outclassed Ryazan club.  Ryazan, a farm team for Atlant, managed only 17 shots against Nikita Lozhkin, who stopped them all.  The rest of this report is a bit strained because google toolbar’s auto-translate feature broke while I was still reading, so much of what I learned I had to shop around for a translator and paste.  Nevertheless here is what I gleaned.  Just past the 3 minute mark of the game, Loko got its first goal- and by the translations I found, either Maxim Osipov scored sprawled on the ice or while having sex on the floor. (true story, those were two of the choices.)  In either event, it was his first score as a Railroadman. 

At 16:37 of the first, Oleg Yashin put in his 9th of the year to up the game to 2-0. Kiril Kaputsin hit him out front with nobody at home  and the Ryazan goalie having missed a chance to lay on the puck for the easy goal.  Daniil Apalkov on yet another pass into clear space  from Rafael Akhmetov to push it to 3-0 at 15:08 of the second period.  The goal was Apalkov’s first, and he followed it up with a perfect pass to Maxim Zyuzakin on a shorthanded situation, who tallied goal # 5 on the year to close the scoring at 4-0.  One of the team’s best offensive performances, having put up 35 shots on goal, it was also Lozhkin’s 3rd shutout and second in a row.  Nikita is 6th in the league with a 93.0% saves percentage and 5th with a 1.77 goals-against average.



Daniel Apal'kov
• Club: Lokomotiv
• Number: 43
• Position: Forward
• Height: 185
• Weight: 87
• Birth Date.: 01.01.1992
• Citizenship: Russia
• Age: 20 years 1 month
• Clubs by season:
Locomotive (11-12)
Next up for Lokomotiv is Dinamo Tver, a farm team of Dynamo Moscow, just down the road.  It is a continuation of Loko’s grand tour of the league’s dregs, as Tver is 9-24-9.  Lokomotiv itself is 8-3-3 and has a pretty good hold on third place in the conference.  The game is on Sunday, so a bit of rest for the boys.

Also, before the translation gave out, I saw that tickets for the VHL’s first ever open air game between the Falcons of Krasnoyarsk and Lokomotiv on the seventeenth of this month went on sale today.  All proceeds are going to the families of the crash victims, and the special price is 50 rubles per ( aprox. $1.65).  I just checked, and it continues cold in the deep heart of Siberia, it is –29 F at 9 AM there- but the rest of the week they will be nosing close to and into positive numbers.